Poppy-peeping OR Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills

Wildflower season is here and at least in southern New Mexico the gold standard is leading the way. Alerted that the Mexican gold poppies are blooming on the lower desert, we made plans to head on Sunday to Rock Hound State Park, which is just below Deming, NM, which in turn is right on I 10, about an hour southeast of us. But we opened the Silver City Sun News on Friday to see images of poppies covering the hillsides around the Lower Box of the Gila. The Lower Box refers to a box canyon that leads down to the Gila River on the upper edge of the lower desert! Convenient – in our hiking class on Wednesday, one of the hikes they told us about was the Lower Box; they even provided a map. So that became our Saturday plan.

Driving down Rt 90 toward Lordsburg, we marveled that there were no signs of poppies in the desert – it looked exactly the same as it always does: shades of green and gray and light brown. Never having gone poppy-hunting before, we didn’t realize that the plants only grow on the hill- and mountain-sides facing the southwest (mostly) and at particular elevations (mostly) and probably in certain soils. We followed our driving instructions, which included turning off paved road and washboarding, sliding and jostling about 20 miles over a road that varied between dirt, sand and rock. We began to see faint glows on the sides of the hills and the slightly-more-distant mountains. After passing the windmill as advertised, and the corral as advertised, populated with a number of penned and not-penned very large cows – with horns – not as advertised, and going through a ‘close the gate please’ barbed wire fence gate, we finally reached the wash that presages the canyon. We parked, carefully avoiding the sandy low point of the wash. Did I mention that we were driving my town-mouse Volvo – what else! Unloaded the car of 2 2-leggeds and 1 with 4onthefloor, shouldered our packs, making sure we had all the water we could carry plus two bottles left in the car, picked up walking sticks, camera, binocs, leash just in case, and headed down the wash. We walked for some time before we came to the dam that was built some long years past, and started into the real box of the canyon. Problem was, we were getting no closer to the poppies we had seen on the hillsides. Walking the box would be fascinating, but that wasn’t our purpose for this trip. So we climbed up, or rather scrabbled and clutched our way up to the ridge, where we could see that the golden hillsides were on the other side of the box canyon, and very possibly the other side of the Gila River which flows by the end of the canyon, though it might be more accurate to say that the canyon falls into the river. We had gotten a late start on the day, having a morning to spend in town; it was by now about 3 pm. We were on our last bottle and a half of water, plus a granola bar and a juicy-juice. Somehow, it did not make sense to pursue the objective on this trip – the objective being to put ourselves into the middle of the field of gold – which could have been another hour away, if even attainable. Turning back was not a universally-held notion. However, 2 humans and the dog finally reached agreement, scrambled back down the hillside into the canyon and started back up the wash.

On Sunday, still game for poppy-hunting, we packed more water jars, more fruit, and made sandwiches and headed south again, this time on Rt 180 to Deming. Again, marveling at the lack of anything of color or note on the way down. Just dustdevils. Good thing they were only little devils; on Friday, serious dust storms had caused the closure of Rt 180 over most of our route. But this day was calmer, bluer, warmer. Rock Hound State Park is on the southwest side of the Little Florida Mountains, not to be confused with the Florida Mountains just to the east, and much taller. In fact, the Florida Mountains were covered with snow above a certain elevation, while the Little Floridas were covered with poppies; wonderful contrast. Certain areas of the mountain-sides just glowed in the mid-day sun. Interesting how the flowers grow more densely in some areas, and less so in others. The growth in the state park was adequate for the objective—to surround ourselves with gold. With a visitors center, a bathroom, picnic tables and well-maintained trails, we couldn’t have found a setting more different from the previous day’s challenges of dirt roads, potty-in-the-sand and a way marked only by the banks of an ephemeral stream bed.

We climbed the trails, Nick going further up than Nutmeg and me. I took lots of shots, knowing that most would not survive the editing. It’s very difficult to get good images at the height of the day’s sun; it’s much too bright; the light is much too harsh. But when you’re there and that’s when you’ll be there, and not earlier or later in the day, you take what you see. Nutmeg must really have been tired – she whined each time we stopped for more than a minute or so. Or else she flopped down. And then I had to encourage her up and moving again. After “rolling in gold” for a couple of hours, we decided to head for home.

Today, we’re tired. Little old 4onthefloor really didn’t want to go all the way around the block this morning. After her necessaries, she tried to convince me to turn back and take the short walk home. Nick was likewise moving slowly. I am suffering from walking-stick shoulder, caused by regularly poking the walking stick into the earth to keep this 2-legged vertical. But happy. This is why we moved here!

Here is the link to my set of images from the weekend on flikr. The images are about half from the Lower Box and half from Rock Hound. Also in the process, I discovered a website that provides up-to-the date information on where the wildflowers are for several states. I got a little…envious, I’ll admit it…when I saw the images posted on the website for California and Arizona. I don’t think we have that many varieties; certainly there aren’t that many blooming now. But we may be able to make a weekend trip in a couple of weeks to nearby Arizona. And who knows, we may be surprised—a whole world of unsuspected wildflowers may spring up here in the area. And if not, we have the blossoms of cherry, weeping cherry and other ornamentals to oh and ah over as we drive around town every day.